battery powered tube amp

Jon Ward · Post by **Jon Ward** » 4 Oct 2021 4:29 pm

I've been having fun playing my lap steel outside with a Ryobi power inverter in the back of a tube amp. I already had batteries and a charger, and it cost about $60 for the inverter. It did hum with the inverter on the spring reverb tank, so I moved it outside of the amp, and it sounds great

Bill Sinclair · Post by **Bill Sinclair** » 4 Oct 2021 5:19 pm

That's pretty slick! What is the battery voltage and amp-hours? Any feel yet for how long it lasts? That's about a 30 Watt amp, right? I wouldn't expect a power tool battery to last very long but it would be nice to have that kind of portability without having to buy a solid state battery powered amp.

Larry Dering · Post by **Larry Dering** » 4 Oct 2021 6:31 pm

Pretty cool method to get it done. I'm also interested in the run time while playing. I have that same amp.

Cappone dAngelo · Post by **Cappone dAngelo** » 4 Oct 2021 7:43 pm

Very interesting! How do you connect the amp's chassis to ground?

Jon Ward · Post by **Jon Ward** » 5 Oct 2021 4:59 pm

I played the 30W Peavey Delta Blues for about 75min with a fully charged 6Ah battery before it drained.
I'll try this with a 1 watt amp this weekend!

There is not an earth ground connection.

Jon Light · Post by **Jon Light** » 6 Oct 2021 4:17 am

Jon Ward wrote:I played the 30W Peavey Delta Blues for about 75min with a fully charged 6Ah battery before it drained.
I'll try this with a 1 watt amp this weekend!

As portable as the batteries are, carry one spare and you're good for an average outing. This is really cool.

I'm wondering if a class D amplifier would have a significantly lower draw so that you could run something like a Quilter for a few hours?

Bill Fisher · Post by **Bill Fisher** » 6 Oct 2021 3:27 pm

I hate batteries.

Bill